Day 49
Our wake up call came at 0600 this morning. We had to be packed up and eating breakfast downstairs at 0630. We left at 0715 for a tour of Delhi. We drove past the Birla Temple, which was the first Hindu temple to allow untouchables inside. Next we saw a Sikh Gurdwara, then past the war memorial, parliament house, secretariat buildings and the official residence of the president of India. Then we had to drive to the airport for our flight to Varanasi.
Once in Varanasi, we went straight to the Hotel Radisson and had a great lunch there. The waiters were wearing jump suits, which threw me off a little bit. I was glad to be able to relax and enjoy a leisurely lunch followed by tea before we left to see some Buddhist temples.
The first one was in Sarnath, an ancient city. We visited a new Buddhist temple first. It had amazing paintings of the Buddha's life on all the walls. In the front was a big golden shrine of the Buddha. Prayer flags hung from trees and fences outside the temple by statues of the Buddha and his followers. It was such a beautiful, peaceful place, and I really would have liked to stay for longer and meditate without the crowd of tourists. But we had places to go.
From the temple, we walked down the street to the ruins of an ancient monastery where the Buddha preached his first sermon after reaching enlightenment. The ruins were less than exciting, but they were peaceful. Kelly and I went to sit in the shade and think for a while. We saw a monk doing the same thing. I wondered what he thought about all the tourists and vendors coming and going from a place that he thought was sacred. We left him to meditate.
As Kelly and I were leaving, a group of Indians said hi to us and giggled. As we took one last look around, a boy and a girl came up behind us. The guy was holding the girl's hand and pulling it towards me, as if to touch me. She quickly pulled it away. It was strange. Were they afraid of us? Kelly hypothesized that white people were something they didn't see very often. Maybe it's just because I'm famous.
Our next event was the really amazing. We drove back to Agra and everyone got onto a bicycle rickshaw to go witness a puja. The streets would be too crowded to get buses through. Traffic in India is really indescribable. Our driver was a racer, too. He passed several other rickshaws in the caravan to the banks of the Ganges River.
Once we were there, of course, the vultures swarmed us. They were selling all the regular things: necklaces, postcards, magnets, what-have-you. One boy tried to sell Kelly and I some bindis, but we weren't taking him up on it. So he just started talking to us. He asked where we were from and what we were studying. He said he was studying English, and I told him it was exceptional. He was really helpful guiding us through the huge crowd to where we were supposed to watch the puja. He even helped me negotiate a price for a flower/candle thing, which is given as a gift to the Ganga for luck.
The puja was incredible. A real live puja! We watched the Ganga Aarti at Dasaswamedh Ghat. I didn't know we would get to see this. The Brahmin priests all sat in the middle of the Ghat on a platform by the edge of the water. They started singing with the musicians, and the priests got up and one stood on each platform in a row along the river. They all moved in synchronized movements to praise the goddess Ganga. They danced with incense and a huge candelabra. It was fascinating.
Before our group left, I lit my candle in the little flower bowl and placed it down in the river. Then the same boy guided Kelly and I back through the huge crowd to where our rickshaws were waiting to take us back to the bus.
As we were riding back, a car full of boys passed us and shouted, “wanna give me a kiss?” And we thought, wow, if we had been in America, they would have said something much more obscene. But they must think that asking a girl for a kiss is smutty here. Kelly and I sat there wondering how they viewed American girls and what they thought our boy-girl relations consisted of.
Despite the general lack of laws, I think our driver thought he was above the law since he had white people for passengers. He pulled all kinds of insane stunts: cutting into intersections when it was the other direction's turn, moving into the opposing lane of traffic to pass other cars or rickshaws. He was a daredevil. We made it back to the bus alive somehow, and they took us back to the hotel where a special dinner and dance floor had been set up for us.
There was a DJ playing all the dance remixes from the late 90s, like Britney Spears, N'Sync, and the macarena. They even had an open bar for us. Indians don't drink very much, so they had some trouble understanding what we wanted. First someone asked for a gin and tonic, but they were out of tonic. The waiter tried to get them to mix it with sprite, saying, “it's very good.” Um, I beg to differ. So then they ordered a double-shot of vodka and cranberry. The waiter brought out two glasses with one shot in them and a glass of cranberry juice.
Who knows what the wait staff thought of all of us dancing. We were all up there in our long skirts and covered shoulders getting down just like normal. They all stood in the back of the room, lined up, watching us. It must have made a good story.
Our wake up call came at 0600 this morning. We had to be packed up and eating breakfast downstairs at 0630. We left at 0715 for a tour of Delhi. We drove past the Birla Temple, which was the first Hindu temple to allow untouchables inside. Next we saw a Sikh Gurdwara, then past the war memorial, parliament house, secretariat buildings and the official residence of the president of India. Then we had to drive to the airport for our flight to Varanasi.
Once in Varanasi, we went straight to the Hotel Radisson and had a great lunch there. The waiters were wearing jump suits, which threw me off a little bit. I was glad to be able to relax and enjoy a leisurely lunch followed by tea before we left to see some Buddhist temples.
The first one was in Sarnath, an ancient city. We visited a new Buddhist temple first. It had amazing paintings of the Buddha's life on all the walls. In the front was a big golden shrine of the Buddha. Prayer flags hung from trees and fences outside the temple by statues of the Buddha and his followers. It was such a beautiful, peaceful place, and I really would have liked to stay for longer and meditate without the crowd of tourists. But we had places to go.
From the temple, we walked down the street to the ruins of an ancient monastery where the Buddha preached his first sermon after reaching enlightenment. The ruins were less than exciting, but they were peaceful. Kelly and I went to sit in the shade and think for a while. We saw a monk doing the same thing. I wondered what he thought about all the tourists and vendors coming and going from a place that he thought was sacred. We left him to meditate.
As Kelly and I were leaving, a group of Indians said hi to us and giggled. As we took one last look around, a boy and a girl came up behind us. The guy was holding the girl's hand and pulling it towards me, as if to touch me. She quickly pulled it away. It was strange. Were they afraid of us? Kelly hypothesized that white people were something they didn't see very often. Maybe it's just because I'm famous.
Our next event was the really amazing. We drove back to Agra and everyone got onto a bicycle rickshaw to go witness a puja. The streets would be too crowded to get buses through. Traffic in India is really indescribable. Our driver was a racer, too. He passed several other rickshaws in the caravan to the banks of the Ganges River.
Once we were there, of course, the vultures swarmed us. They were selling all the regular things: necklaces, postcards, magnets, what-have-you. One boy tried to sell Kelly and I some bindis, but we weren't taking him up on it. So he just started talking to us. He asked where we were from and what we were studying. He said he was studying English, and I told him it was exceptional. He was really helpful guiding us through the huge crowd to where we were supposed to watch the puja. He even helped me negotiate a price for a flower/candle thing, which is given as a gift to the Ganga for luck.
The puja was incredible. A real live puja! We watched the Ganga Aarti at Dasaswamedh Ghat. I didn't know we would get to see this. The Brahmin priests all sat in the middle of the Ghat on a platform by the edge of the water. They started singing with the musicians, and the priests got up and one stood on each platform in a row along the river. They all moved in synchronized movements to praise the goddess Ganga. They danced with incense and a huge candelabra. It was fascinating.Before our group left, I lit my candle in the little flower bowl and placed it down in the river. Then the same boy guided Kelly and I back through the huge crowd to where our rickshaws were waiting to take us back to the bus.
As we were riding back, a car full of boys passed us and shouted, “wanna give me a kiss?” And we thought, wow, if we had been in America, they would have said something much more obscene. But they must think that asking a girl for a kiss is smutty here. Kelly and I sat there wondering how they viewed American girls and what they thought our boy-girl relations consisted of.Despite the general lack of laws, I think our driver thought he was above the law since he had white people for passengers. He pulled all kinds of insane stunts: cutting into intersections when it was the other direction's turn, moving into the opposing lane of traffic to pass other cars or rickshaws. He was a daredevil. We made it back to the bus alive somehow, and they took us back to the hotel where a special dinner and dance floor had been set up for us.
There was a DJ playing all the dance remixes from the late 90s, like Britney Spears, N'Sync, and the macarena. They even had an open bar for us. Indians don't drink very much, so they had some trouble understanding what we wanted. First someone asked for a gin and tonic, but they were out of tonic. The waiter tried to get them to mix it with sprite, saying, “it's very good.” Um, I beg to differ. So then they ordered a double-shot of vodka and cranberry. The waiter brought out two glasses with one shot in them and a glass of cranberry juice.
Who knows what the wait staff thought of all of us dancing. We were all up there in our long skirts and covered shoulders getting down just like normal. They all stood in the back of the room, lined up, watching us. It must have made a good story.
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